“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Wilbur Ross for Commerce secretary - Trump Meets With Goldman’s Cohn as Dinner Set With Romney - Ross Said to Be Trump’s Pick for Commerce Secretary

“The business of America is business” – a famously unfair misquote…

When President Warren G. Harding died from a heart-related problem in 1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge became the 30th President of the United States.

The following year, with his popularity buoyed by a strong economy of the “Roaring Twenties”, Coolidge handily won the 1924 presidential election, using the campaign slogan “Keep Cool With Coolidge.”

Unlike some presidents, “Silent Cal” Coolidge wasn’t known for making memorable statements.

The most famous quote associated with him is a line about business being the business of America.

That line is often given as“The business of America is business” or “The business of the American people is business.”

In fact, both of those versions are misquotes.

They aren’t radically different from what he actually said, which was “the chief business of the American people is business.”

However, when this short quote or the misquote versions are cited alone, out of context, they tend to give the inaccurate impression that Coolidge was a totally one-dimensional, pro-business cheerleader.

The speech he gave that day was titled “The Press Under a Free Government.” It focused on the role of the press in free market democracies, like America.

Coolidge noted that the press was far more likely to publish propaganda in autocratic or Socialist countries.

He acknowledged concerns about whether business considerations could affect editorial positions and news reporting in a society like the US. But he pointed out the flip side, saying:

“There does not seem to be cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public, whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise. Rather, it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation, is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences.”

Then Coolidge added his famous quote:

“After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these the moving impulses of our life.”

It’s hard to dispute the notion that most Americans are concerned about the economy and personal prosperity. And, Coolidge made it clear that he didn't simply mean “greed is good.”

“Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence,” he said. “But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it...But it calls for additional effort to avoid even the appearance of the evil of selfishness. In every worthy profession, of course, there will always be a minority who will appeal to the baser instinct. There always have been, probably always will be, some who will feel that their own temporary interest may be furthered by betraying the interest of others.”

It’s true that Coolidge was generally a pro-business, small-government type politician; sort of a Ronald Reagan without charisma.

But, in my opinion, the spin that is often put on his famous quote about the business of America is clearly overly simplistic and unfair.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been promising since September to liberate the northern Syrian town of al-Bab from the Islamic State (IS) and move east to Manbij to rid it of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Turkey claims that the YPG — the core of the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighting IS — and its parent organization, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), are terrorist groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but it has failed to generate international support for this position. Recent developments on the ground also point to increasing difficulties for Erdogan's efforts to fulfill his promises.

After capturing the nearby IS stronghold of Dabiq in October, Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) militias, Ankara’s main proxy in Syria, have been unable to muster a serious attack against al-Bab. The situation grew militarily complicated for Turkey after its jets began striking YPG targets in the area — resulting in the United States withdrawing air support for FSA and Turkish forces — and after Russia and Syrian regime forces made serious headway against the FSA in Aleppo, to which al-Bab provides access...

Of course, if the analyst were to read the entire article instead of just the first two paragraphs before commenting, he would have a better basis for formulating his analysis. For instance, he might have seen mention of the air attack that took out a bunch of Turkey's FSA surrogates, an attack that everyone assumes was launched by Russia but which Russia denies.

2nd Amendment MandateEditorial of The New York Sun | November 29, 2016

Could America be on the brink of a restoration of true Second Amendment rights? Could even states like New York be covered by the article of the Bill of Rights that has been called the palladium of our liberty? Those are two questions in the wake of the election that has handed up Donald Trump as the next president of America and retained the Republicans in control of Congress. One of the major themes of Mr. Trump’s campaign was his call to make the Second Amendment great again.

No sooner had the race been won than one of the leading civil rights organizations in the country, the National Rifle Association, put out a call for Congress and Mr. Trump to pass National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity “as quickly as it can be written and signed.” That kind of legislation would be a step toward making a gun license usable across the country, much the way a driver license is, though the analogy isn’t exact. The New York Sun has long-since endorsed such a measure....

Known as a traje de luces (suit of lights), this uniform was worn by matador Antonio Ordóñez around 1959, and was bought by Hemingway from him. Hemingway’s friend A.E. Hotchner included this note along with the suit:“In the summer of 1959, I was traveling throughout Spain with Ernest Hemingway following the circuit of the two great matadors Ordóñez and [Luis Miguel] Dominguín. Ernest’s close friend was Ordóñez. On one occasion, Hemingway suggested that I should go into the ring with the two matadors at one of their big appearances, which occurred in the town of Ciudad Real before a crowd of 15,000 spectators. We went to Antonio’s room where the sword handler was ready to dress me in one of Antonio’s outfits. I was amazed at how heavy, intricate, and costly they are. At that time the suit I wore cost about $3,000.00, since all of the thousands of gold sequins were sewn on by hand. Hemingway had purchased this suit from Antonio, who was the world’s number one bullfighter (at the time); he would no longer wear it since it had bloodstains on the legs ….”

Pre-auction estimate: $8,000–$12,000. For more on the lot, click here.

""If this is confirmed by the investigators it would be very painful because it stems from negligence," Bocanegra told Caracol Radio on Wednesday when asked whether the plane should not have attempted such a long haul.

One key piece to unlocking the mystery could come from Ximena Sanchez, a Bolivian flight attendant who survived the crash and told rescuers the plane had run out of fuel moments before the crash. Investigators were expected to interview her on Wednesday at the clinic near Medellin where she is recovering.

"'We ran out of fuel. The airplane turned off,'" Sanchez told Arquimedes Mejia, who helped pull the flight attendant from the wreckage. "That was the only thing she told me," he told the Associated Press in an interview.

Investigators also want to speak to Juan Sebastian Upegui, the copilot on an Avianca commercial flight who was in contact with air traffic controllers near Medellin's Jose Maria Cordova airport at the time the chartered plane went down.

In a four-minute recording that appears to be an audio message to a friend, Upegui described how he heard the doomed flight's pilot request priority to land because he was out of fuel. Growing ever more desperate, the pilot eventually declared "Mayday! Mayday!" because of a "total electrical failure," Upegui said, before the plane quickly began to lose speed and altitude in an almost three-minute death spiral.

"I remember I was pulling really hard for them, saying 'Make it, make it, make it, make it,'" Upegui says in the recording, which circulated on social media. "Then it stopped. … The controller's voice starts to break up and she sounds really sad. We're in the plane and start to cry."

Another clue is the crash site itself, where no traces of fuel have been found. Often planes go up in flames upon impact but one reason a few passengers survived was because the plane didn't explode.

John Cox, a retired airline pilot and chief executive of Florida-based Safety Operating Systems, said the aircraft's amount of fuel deserves a careful look.

"The airplane was being flight planned right to its maximum. Right there it says that even if everything goes well they are not going to have a large amount of fuel when they arrive," said Cox. "I don't understand how they could do the flight nonstop with the fuel requirements that the regulations stipulate.""

In an instance of the punishment possibly being harsher than the crime, a Canadian police department is subjecting drunk drivers this holiday season to music from possibly the world’s most hated band.

Kensington Police Service, which operates in the province of Prince Edward Island in Canada, announced on Facebook this week that “those dumb enough to feel they can drink and drive” in the remainder of the year will be slapped with not only a hefty fine, a year’s driving suspension, and a criminal charge—but also “a bonus gift of playing the office’s copy of Nickelback in the cruiser on the way to jail.”

“I’m sure there’s some kind of law prohibiting this sort of police brutality,” one person commented on the police department’s post. Said another: “Don’t you think the type of people that has made such a horrible decision to drink and drive […] probably are Nickelback fans anyways?”

Why Nickelback draws so much intense dislike remains the subject of much contention amongst scholars and internet dwellers; but the fact is that, thanks to years of online memes, the band’s name has become synonymous with a certain universal awfulness. (Several researchers have attempted to explore the roots of people’s revulsion. Some say our hatred of Nickelback is, in fact, a deep-down hatred of ourselves.)

If nothing else, the Kensington police’s warning might be memorable enough to stick in people’s minds—which, given that alcohol-related road incidents tend to soar during the holiday season, is likely the point.

Medardo Gonzalez, leader of the party formed by Salvadoran rebels after 1992 peace accords, recalled Castro's almost obsessive fascination with guerrilla tactics when meeting with rebel leaders in the 1980s. "He spent hours with us, discussing both general strategy and tactics," Medardo said.

...

But younger Salvadorans worry more about the government's offensive against violent street gangs, themselves partly born of the civil war, when young Salvadorans fled to the United States and formed the feared Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha gangs.

Castro "was a man who fought for his people, and had the courage to confront U.S. power," said Sebastian Perez, a Salvadoran. "I know he helped the guerrillas and that some here love him, but some hate him, as well."

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.